


After 2 AM

by Kendal_Lynne



Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Fluff, Ian loves Mickey, M/M, Mickey POV, Season 2, angsty fluff, drunk boys, i swear as much as mickey and it's a problem, life is complicated, mickey loves ian, so much swearing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-18
Updated: 2014-05-18
Packaged: 2018-01-25 13:21:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,540
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1650098
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kendal_Lynne/pseuds/Kendal_Lynne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“You don’t make any fucking sense to me.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	After 2 AM

**Author's Note:**

> Set in season 2, because I dearly miss their dynamics at this point in their relationship.
> 
> I imagine this taking place a few days before Frank catches them in the act and everything gets shot to hell.

“You don’t make any fucking sense to me.”

Nothing good ever happened after 2 am. Mickey read that somewhere. Or heard it. That was more likely, to be honest. Fuck, whatever. It doesn’t matter where the phrase came from. Cause it was true.

“What does that even mean?”

And it had never been more true than in this moment, lying on his back on the wet grass of the baseball field one hot night in July. But Mickey wasn’t looking at the sky. He had his head turned so that he was staring into the very green and very wide eyes of Ian fucking Gallagher.

They were so drunk and blazed and fucked-out that neither boy could do anything but lie there and stare at each other. 

They had arrived hours before, horny and ready for whatever the night gave them.

But it turns out they weren’t ready for this. 

Ian had spoken first because of course he had. Because if Mickey had it his way, he was never open his mouth around this kid. Not even to tell him to fuck off. Every syllable that slipped over his tongue felt like an accident waiting to happen. An accident he could never take back or recover from. 

And then he’d really be fucked. And not in a good way. 

“I like you with a beard” Ian said, breaking the silence. 

Mickey felt his adoring eyes burning into his temple. He refused to look over at Ian at first. He refused to look at the stars too, cause fuck that. He literally just laid there with his eye closed, waiting to regain feeling in his legs so he could get the hell out of there.

But the damp grass felt good on his sweaty back, his ass had a pleasant ache, and a few feet away from him, Ian Gallagher told him that he liked his fucking beard.

“Why?” Mickey asked before he could stop himself. The question kept him up on a nightly basis. WHY WHY WHY…

“I just…I like everything about you, Mick” Ian told him. 

That’s when Mickey opened his eyes and turned his head to look at him. He’s not sure how many minutes passed before he blurted out—

“You don’t make any fucking sense to me.”

There was nothing teasing or playful in his tone. Mickey was actually being honest-to-god truthful and that was something he never did. Especially not around Ian. Because nothing good ever fucking happens after 2am and he was pretty sure it was close to 3 by then.

“What does that even mean?” Ian asked. 

Because everything is so clear and perfect and nice inside that redhead’s brain. Sometimes Mickey envied him. Other times he wanted to beat him to a pulp.

Ian was the definition of a contradiction.

On one hand, he was this badass, ROTC, gun slinging, soldier-in-training with his tight muscular body that knew how to fuck like a porn star.

On the other hand, he was just this cute, freckly kid with big puppy dog eyes and a huge softy heart.

He had only two flaws that Mickey could find. One, he was way too optimistic for a gay kid from the Southside. Two:

“The way you look at me.”

“What about it?”

Mickey shakes his head, barely perceptible, but Ian notices. He notices every fucking thing about him. 

“It’s like…fuck, I can’t even fucking say it.”

Why did Mickey open his mouth? Why? The night was going so well and now they’re engaged in some kind of fucked up pillow talk, but there’s no pillows cause they’re outside and they aren’t sharing sweet nothings because everything about Mickey is bitter and everything about Ian matters so much he’s practically bursting with it.

“Don’t pussy out” Ian tells him, taunts him. Before saying, gently, “I wanna know what you see when I look at you.”

This boy will be the death of him. It’s not a prediction; it’s set in the stone that his body will be buried beneath.

Here Lies Mickey Milkovich. Loved So Much By A Boy He Didn’t Deserve, It Tore Him In Half.

“You look at me like I hung the stars” Mickey says. He would have spat out the words if he could have. Would have scrunched up his nose and thrown up his hands in disgust like what he just said was the most absurd thing in the world.

But there would have been no point.

Because right after he said that, Ian Gallagher’s sweet, open face suddenly starts to twinkle as his mouth forms an easy smile.

_“You smile too much” Mickey told him once._

_“I smile enough for the both of us” Ian replied, easily. Everything is so fucking easy for him._

_“You could smile more often, you know” he continued “if you really wanted to.”_

_“I don’t want to” Mickey said._

_What he meant was “I can’t.”_

_What he wanted to say was “Teach me how.”_

“Like I hung the stars in your fucking sky,” he says again, this time, almost angrily. 

“What about that confuses you exactly?” Ian asks. 

And it’s like he doesn’t know Mickey at all.

“Because I’m—”

Trash. Worthless. Scum. 

The words rose up in his throat like bile.

A thug. A criminal. A piece of shit.

He doesn’t know where to begin. Which is unfortunate, because Ian seems like he’s been waiting for this moment forever.

“I spend all my free time with you. I only have sex with you. I’ve told you things I’ve never told anyone before. You’re the person I look forward to seeing the most when I wake up in the morning, and when you were gone last year, colors looks less vivid.”

“What are you talking about, colors? You are seriously out of your damn mind” Mickey tells him. 

The words are empty, but at this point, saying anything is better than focusing on the all-too familiar sting behind his eyes. The one he reserves for the shower or when he smashes his face into his pillow.

“I like the sound of your voice. I like the way you move your eyebrows and how you puff out your chest when you walk. I like your stained tank tops and the dirt under your fingernails.”

Mickey body feels like lead. Like if you pushed him into the ocean, he’d sink to the very bottom without so much as a splash. 

Is this the feeling people where always boasting about? This terrible, sickening dread? 

Is this love?

“Stop it, Gallagher” Mickey means to yell it, but it comes out weak.

“Why?”

There it is again. All questions and fears that haunted him nightly now summed up in a single plea from the beautiful boy beside him.

WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY

“Because…”

This is so fucked. So, so fucked. And it’s all Ian’s fault. Or maybe it’s Mickey’s, cause he’s the one who let it get this far. He’s the one would couldn’t stay away and now he’s gone and ruined this poor kid for the rest of his life. 

This poor kid that thinks the two of them ever had a snowball’s chance in hell. 

And now here they are, lying on this fucking wet grass, pouring their plastered little hearts out to each other. 

It feels like a dream.

“Why is it so fucking hard for you to believe that I love you?” 

It feels like a nightmare.

“Because I’m me!” Mickey yells, before adding quietly “and because you’re you.”

Jesus, he’s really gone and done it now. 

He wishes the ground would open up and swallow him whole.

He settles for digging the heels of his hands into his closed eye sockets, willing the world to stop spinning and this fucking conversation to end.

But then something unexpected happens.

Ian crawls over to Mickey, straddling his stomach. He pulls Mickey’s hands from his face and pins his arms to the grass, forcing Mickey to look at him.

Before Mickey can open his mouth to say another thing he’d soon regret, Ian swoops down and kisses him. 

Mickey would never admit this, but it’s the first time anyone has ever kissed him. It’s perfect and damning in the way it makes his body ignite, knowing this is all he ever wants, knowing he can never have it. Not really. Not when he knows that Ian deserves better, deserves to get out of this town and meet someone that wasn’t such a--

“Don’t do that again,” Mickey whispers when Ian pulls back, resting his forehead against his.

“But…”

“Just don’t” Mickey begs. 

They stay like that for a while, long after Ian releases his hold on Mickey’s arms.

“Fine” Ian says finally “But I can’t promise I won’t try.”

Ian rolls off him, back onto the grass.

“It’s really late” Ian says after a moment “I bet Lip’s wondering where I am.”

 _No_ he wants to say _I’m sorry, don’t go._

But of course he doesn’t. Can’t.

“Yeah, Mandy’s always worried when I don’t go home.”

They don’t talk anymore after that. Ian stands up first, offering Mickey a hand.

Mickey ignores it and gets up on his own, albeit a little less graceful than if he just let Ian help him. 

They rearrange their clothes to look slightly less debauched, even though no one in town was around to judge them. 

They walk side by side until the streets finally diverge in the opposite directions leading to their homes. 

Mickey breezes past Ian without so much as a ‘goodbye,’ telling himself it was better this way. 

Only he’s never completely sure that he is, especially when he gets home and sees Mandy and the rest of his family totally dead to the world and ignorant of his missing whereabouts. 

No one knew he was gone. Which meant he could have stayed right where he was. All night, even.

With Ian. 

_“When you were gone last year, colors were less vivid”_

Mickey still doesn’t know exactly what the fuck the kid was going on about, but he suddenly has a feeling he might know. At least a little bit.

As Mickey makes his way to his bedroom, he feels stunted with how much he regrets walking away from Ian tonight. 

What’s worse is that he wants to hear Ian’s voice again. Not tomorrow when they’d surely see each other again, but now. Right now. It almost suffocates him, the tightening in his chest that he knows can only be calmed by hearing the other boy’s voice.

It’s so fucking pathetic how badly he already misses the kid that he only just left.

Mickey curses the fact that he doesn’t own a cellphone, until he remembers that Mandy stole an iphone from some dumb freshman the week before.

He sneaks into her room without much thought as to what he’d stay if he got caught and swipes the phone on her dresser.

He takes it back into his room and dials Ian’s number.

Ian answers on the second ring.

“Mandy?” Ian asks quietly, obviously trying to not wake his siblings.

“It’s me” Mickey says.

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

Mickey can feel an embarrassed flush crawl up his neck and cheeks when he realizes he can’t come up with a single excuse as to why he’s calling him—except the truth, but Mickey wouldn’t admit he actually missed Ian even if he was held at gunpoint.

Luckily, Ian doesn’t seem to think he needs one. 

He hears the faint sound of a door click and figures Ian must have moved to the hallway, cause his voice is less guarded when he speaks again.

“So, turned out there was no real rush to get home after all.”

“Oh yeah, why’s that?” Mickey asks, even though he could guess pretty easily. 

“Everyone was asleep by the time I got back. No one even knew I was gone.”

“Same here, man.”

Ian laughs on the other end and with Mickey in the safety on his own bedroom, he doesn’t have to hold back the smile that blossoms on his face.

“This happens to me a lot, you know. Being forgotten. Don’t know why I’m surprised.”

“I would have noticed” Mickey tells him “If you were missing, I mean.” 

“Really?”

“Sure, especially would have noticed if my dick stopped getting sucked on a regular basis” he teases.

Ian laughs again, louder this time. Mickey feels his heart swell three times in size.

“Screw you, I’m gonna kick your ass the next time I see you.”

“Oh yeah, tough guy? You gonna hold me down and make me take it?”

“If that’s what you want, Mick” Ian says, sounding so sincere it makes Mickey grip the phone in his hand to the point of pain.

“I want everything” Mickey says quietly.

Suddenly it’s so quiet you can hear a pin drop.

“I mean, not everything…”

“Then why’d you say it?” Ian asks.

Mickey rubs his face.

“I don’t know, man. I’m fucking tired.”

Ian doesn’t say anything for a few minutes. Mickey thinks for a second that maybe Ian fell asleep, so he takes a chance.

“I meant what I said about noticing you if you were gone, though. And not just cause of the sex” Mickey tells him.

“Why?”

why….why…why… 

“Cause you matter, that’s why.”

“I matter to you?” 

The surprise in his voice offends Mickey more than it should.

“I just said so, didn’t I?”

“Thanks Mick” Ian says finally “And thanks for calling to say goodnight.”

“That’s not why I called you, dick.”

“Well it’s either that or because you didn’t want me to go to bed upset, so which is it?”

“Fuck you.”

“Goodnight, Mickey” Ian sing-songs to him.

Mickey huffs out a sigh, mostly for Ian’s benefit, as he finds himself pressing a grin into his pillow.

“Goodnight” he says to Ian, cause why the fuck not? It’s not like this night could get any gayer.

Except then it sort of does, because Mickey decides he’s going to wait for Ian to hang up first before he does the same.

Only the tell-tale ‘click’ never happens. 

He hears some rustling on the other end, most likely Ian getting himself comfortable on his living room couch. 

Mickey entertains the idea that maybe Ian forgot to end the call, before it occurs to him that Ian is probably waiting for Mickey to hang up. 

Mickey’s tempted to speak up-- cause really, how fucking gay were they? –but when Ian lets out a small, content sigh into the phone, Mickey realizes that it’s actually kinda nice. 

He can’t help but feel sort of comforted knowing that Ian is there with him, even though he isn’t technically in the room with him. It makes him feel safe.

Ian makes him feel safe, cause Ian matters to him.

Ian matters more than anyone else in the world ever did or would.

Normally the thought would make him sick to his stomach.

But tonight it washes over him and fills him with affection and hope.

And when Ian begins to snore softly on the other end, Mickey allows himself to be pulled under as well.

Somewhere in the Southside of Chicago, a clock reads 4:27am.


End file.
